09 April 2014, 02:46 PM IST
It is not just the Election Commission which is doing its utmost to ensure that the on-going elections are free and fair. The political contestants too – or, rather, their publicity agents – are making sure that the polls are fair, if not also free.
However, the meaning of the word fair differs considerably in the vocabulary of the EC and that of the candidates. While to the EC 'fair' means just and equitable, to the contestants and their image managers 'fair' means light-complexioned. The result is that, in hurly-burley of the polls, a hue and cry is being raised about hue, imparting a literally new complexion to the face of our polity.
Advertising agencies have reportedly been working round-the-clock on various forms of publicity material featuring the poll contestants to make the candidates look lighter-skinned than they are in the flesh. It remains to be seen if the electorate rightly responds to such colour-coded symbolism that a fair-faced politician is also likely to prove fair in the other sense of the term.
Be that as it may, along with competitive populism what might be called competitive pigmentation, or lack of it, has also entered the electoral race. Belonging as we do to a sun-tanned country, many if not most Indians are conscious of the lightness or otherwise of their skin tones, as shown by the soaring sales figures of face-whitening creams and other cosmetics for both genders.
Folk lore would have us believe that lightness of complexion bestows social cachet in that it provides prime facie evidence that the person concerned belongs to the privileged classes who are not obliged to labour outdoors under a scorching sun that darkens the skin. Bollywood and the entertainment world in general have further projected this light-equals-right image by type-casting heroes and heroines as a whiter shade of pale, while villains are almost invariably depicted as what Rupert Brooke might have described as being "swarthy, squat and full of guile."
In traditional mythology, however, as distinct from the new mythology sought to be created by the movie industry, darkness of skin often denoted divine power. Rama is often referred to as the 'blue-skinned god', and Krishna is depicted as having a dusky complexion, as befits a cowherd deity.
Taking the cue from such examples, one might think that instead of trying to whiten up their images, our politicians might on the contrary seek to appear to be darker than they actually are. This might show that, rather than remaining indoors in ivory towers, they have been out and about in the heat and dust toiling for the uplift of aam admi.
Shades of complexion, it would seem, can have different and often contradictory shades of meaning. Indian elections have always been colourful affairs, and attempts to convert them to a black-and-white contest could well backfire, with canny voters deeming proponents of such a shady strategy to be beyond the pale, in more ways than one.
jug.suraiya@timesgroup.com
Anda sedang membaca artikel tentang
Different shades of meaning
Dengan url
http://osteoporosista.blogspot.com/2014/04/different-shades-of-meaning.html
Anda boleh menyebar luaskannya atau mengcopy paste-nya
Different shades of meaning
namun jangan lupa untuk meletakkan link
sebagai sumbernya
0 komentar:
Posting Komentar